Author Archives: Cuba Study Group

The regulations announced on November 8 2017 are highly counterproductive.

Instead of supporting the Cuban private sector, as the administration has stated, new travel rules harm Cuban entrepreneurs and their employees by making it more difficult for individual Americans to visit the island and patronize their businesses. Rather than deal a lasting blow to the Cuban military, the ban on U.S. interaction with 180 Cuban state enterprises imposes unwieldly, and arguably unenforceable, regulatory burdens on U.S. citizens. More generally, these measures represent a setback to the broader process of normalization, which continues to be overwhelmingly popular with both the U.S. and Cuban people.

The Cuba Study Group disagrees, in particular, with the Trump administration’s decision to ban non-academic educational and individual people-to-people travel. The free flow of people, ideas, information, and goods helps, rather than hinders, the cause of meaningful reform on the island. Moreover, U.S. travelers frequent privately-owned rooms and other small businesses at a higher rate than visitors from any other country. President Trump’s measures will therefore hit the island’s private sector hardest, not the government, as tourists from other countries will continue to patronize state-owned companies and hotels.

Raúl Castro is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2018. At the same time, the country’s internal economic agenda has stagnated, and Hurricane Irma just devastated wide swaths of the island’s northern coast.

At this juncture of uncertainty and transition, it is in the best interest of the United States to remain engaged as the island confronts multiple challenges. By providing the Cuban government an excuse to revive a siege mentality, the Trump administration’s policies ultimately favor those in Cuba in a position to benefit most from the status quo where essential economic and political reforms continue to be neglected. As in the pre-normalization era, the Cuban people, and not the Cuban government, will most keenly feel the results.

President Trump’s announcement today indicates how far the Cuba policy debate has moved, despite intense pressure from scarce congressional hardliners. Many of the gains of normalization remain intact. At best, this is a partial victory for those who hoped to reverse increased bilateral ties. However, the Cuba Study Group reiterates its view that the completely free flow of people, ideas, information, and goods helps, rather than hinders, the cause of meaningful reform on the island. We therefore urge President Trump to reject the half-measures he proposed today and pursue a policy of full normalization with the island.

Restricting U.S. travel isolates Cubans from knowledge of American political, economic, and human rights norms. Also, it is tendentious to purportedly champion freedom in Cuba by limiting the freedoms of U.S. citizens. The U.S. does not impose similar travel restrictions on any other country, including North Korea and Iran. 81% of Americans, 75% of Cuban-Americans, and virtually all Cubans support the freedom of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. Claiming to support a “better deal” for Americans, Cubans, and Cuban-Americans, while ignoring their desires, is highly disingenuous.

Restricting U.S. travel as the Trump administration has proposed will also harm Cuban private business owners far more than the government. Even if not broadly applied, the threat of further enforcement will have negative repercussions on Cubans on the island. Individual U.S. travelers utilize privately-rented rooms at a higher rate than visitors from any other country. Beyond lodging, many small businesses (restaurants, shops, etc.) depend on U.S and other visitors for their livelihood. Limiting people-to-people travel once again to organized groups will significantly impact the Cuban people the President says his measures are intended to support. Moreover, contrary to the stated policy’s objectives, this measure will push remaining U.S. travelers into tours overseen by the Cuban government, rather than allowing real paths for citizen-to-citizen exchange.

President Trump should narrowly interpret the prohibition against trade with organizations tied to the Cuban military. There is a vast difference between a Fortune 500 company forming a joint venture with the Cuban military and a U.S. humanitarian worker buying a water bottle at a government-run store. Regardless, the task of enforcement and oversight will be onerous. We note the irony of a Republican administration burdening Americans with regulations of little clarity or use.

The limited scope of the review’s conclusions represents an admission of defeat by previously intransigent hardliners. In statements defending the new policy, they adopted pro-normalization positions they once scorned: the importance of continued diplomatic engagement and of supporting Cuba’s private sector.

Nonetheless, the tone of hostility in the President’s address may jeopardize crucial government-to-government ties on issues of mutual concern—counterterrorism, counter- narcotics, and migration cooperation—that administration officials ostensibly want to preserve. We urge President Trump to pursue a policy of full normalization that benefits the U.S. economy, serves U.S. interests, and can help place Cubans on a path to a better future.

“Supporting the bill was good election-year politics in Florida, but it undermined whatever chance I might have if I won a second term to lift the embargo in return for positive changes within Cuba. It almost appeared that Castro was trying to force us to maintain the embargo as an excuse for the economic failures of his regime.” —President Bill Clinton

“To make matters worse, the economic fence has helped to fuel the idea of a place besieged, where dissent comes to be equated with an act of treason. The exterior blockade has strengthened the interior blockade.” —Yoani Sanchez

Opening Statement

The U.S. embargo toward Cuba is a collection of prohibitions, restrictions and sanctions derived from several laws that has been in effect for more than 50 years. Taken together and compounded with the designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” they result in the most severe set of sanctions and restrictions applied against any current adversary of the United States. This collection of sanctions was first codified into law by the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (“Torricelli”), severely tightened by the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 (“Helms-Burton”), and modified by the Trade Sanctions and Reform Act of 2000 (“TSRA”), thus transferring almost absolute authority over U.S. policy toward Cuba from the Executive Branch to the U.S. Congress.

The codification of the U.S. embargo against Cuba has failed to accomplish its objectives, as stated in Helms-Burton, of causing regime change and restoring democracy in Cuba. Continuing to ignore this obvious truth is not only counterproductive to the interests of the United States, but also increasingly damaging to Cuban civil society, including the more than 400,000 Cubans now working as licensed private entrepreneurs, because it places the burden of sanctions squarely on their shoulders to bear.

At a time when Cuba seems headed toward a path of change and reforms, albeit slower than desired, and a real debate seems to be emerging within Cuba’s elite regarding its future, the inflexibility of U.S. policy has the ironic effect of hurting and delaying the very changes it seeks to produce by severely limiting Cuba’s ability to implement major economic reforms and strengthening the hand of the reactionaries, rather than the reformers, within the Cuban government.

Moreover, Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA deny the United States the flexibility to address dynamic conditions in Cuba in a strategic and proactive way. They effectively tie the President’s hands in responding to developments on the Island, placing the impetus for taking advantage of the processes of change in Cuba in hands of hard-liners among Cuba’s ruling elites, whose interests are best served by the perpetuation of the embargo.

The Cuba Study Group is publishing this whitepaper to acknowledge that a Cuba policy fundamentally based on blanket unilateral sanctions and isolation has been grossly ineffective for more than half a century; it disproportionately hurts the Cuban people and is counterproductive to the creation of an enabling transitional environment in Cuba where civil society can prosper and bring about the desired social, political and economic changes for which we long.

Thus, we call for the repeal of the Helms-Burton Act, its related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA, and for the restoration of authority over U.S.-Cuba policy to the Executive Branch. It is our belief that we can no longer afford to ignore the failure of this legislation.

Executive Summary

Seventeen years after its enactment, the Helms-Burton Act—which further codified the sanctions framework commonly referred to as the U.S. embargo against Cuba and conditions its suspension on the existence of a transition or democratic government in Cuba—has proven to be a counterproductive policy that has failed to achieve its stated purposes in an increasingly interconnected world.

Helms-Burton has failed to advance the cause of freedom and prosperity for the Cuban people, to encourage free and democratic elections in Cuba, to secure international sanctions against the Cuban government, or to advance the national security interests of the United States. It provides a policy framework for U.S. support to the Cuban people in response to the formation of a transition government in Cuba; yet, the all-or-nothing nature of its conditions for suspension undermine that very framework by effectively placing control over changes to embargo sanctions in the hands of the current Cuban leadership. Simply stated, it is an archaic policy that hinders the ability of the United States to respond swiftly, intelligently and in a nuanced way to developments on the island.

Worst of all, the failures of Helms-Burton have more recently produced a tragic paradox: Policies once designed to promote democratization through isolation are now stifling civil society, including an emerging class of private entrepreneurs and democracy advocates whose rise represents the best hope for a free and open society in Cuba in more than 50 years.

The Cuba Study Group believes that the most effective way to break the deadlock of “all-or-nothing” conditionality and remedy the ineffectiveness of current U.S.-Cuba policy is to de-codify the embargo through the repeal of Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA that limit the Executive Branch’s authority over U.S. foreign policy toward the Island (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions”). De-codifying the embargo would allow the Executive Branch the flexibility to respond strategically to developments in the Island as they take place; using the entire range of foreign policy tools at its disposal—including diplomatic, economic, legal, political and cultural—to advance the cause of human rights and incentivize changes in Cuba.

The primary consequences of Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions have been to isolate the United States from Cuba and to serve as a political scapegoat for the Cuban government’s many failures. It has become a “Great Crutch” to all sides of the Cuba debate. First, for ordinary Cubans, their struggle has fallen hostage to an international dispute between their government and the United States, which they see themselves as powerless to affect. For the Cuban leadership, it has become easier to blame the embargo than to adopt the difficult reforms needed to fix their economy. Lastly, for defenders of the status-quo within the Cuban-American community, it has become easier to wait for the United States to solve our national problem rather than engage in the difficult and necessary processes of reconciliation and reunification.

Helms-Burton indiscriminately impacts all sectors of Cuban society, including democracy advocates and private entrepreneurs, causing disproportionate economic damage to the most vulnerable segments of the population. Conditioning our policy of resource denial on sweeping political reforms has only served to strengthen the Cuban government. The scarce resources available in an authoritarian Cuba have been and continue to be allocated primarily based on political priorities, thereby increasing the state’s relative power and its ability to control its citizens.

The majority of American voters, Cuban-Americans and Cuban democracy advocates in the Island have rejected isolation as an element of U.S. policy toward Cuba and have called on the U.S. government to implement a policy of greater contact and exchange with Cuban society. As Cuba undergoes a slow and uncertain process of reforms, the continued existence of blanket U.S. sanctions only hinders the types of political reforms that Helms-Burton demands.

Instead of maintaining a rigid policy that ties our hands and obsesses over hurting the Cuban leadership, U.S. policy-makers should adopt a results-oriented policy that focuses primarily on empowering the Cuban people while simultaneously pressing the Cuban government to cease its repressive practices and respect fundamental human rights. Repealing Helms-Burton would also free civil society development and assistance programs to be implemented outside of a contentious sanctions framework.

Furthermore, the Cuba Study Group believes that any forthcoming congressional review of current legislation relating to Cuba, such as a review of the Cuban Adjustment Act, must require a review of the totality of the legislative framework codified in Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions so that the United States may finally develop a coherent policy toward the Island.

While we wait on the U.S. Congress to act, the Executive Branch should continue to take proactive steps through its limited licensing authority to safeguard and expand the free flow of contacts and resources to the Island, encourage independent economic and political activity in Cuba, and increase the relative power of Cuban private actors. The U.S. should pursue these courses of action independent of actions taken by the Cuban government so as not to place the reigns of U.S. policy in the hands of Cuban proponents of the status quo.

The Cuban government should recognize the political plurality of the nation and consequently help channel the institutionalization of those new utopians inerted in the Cuban reality, through consolidation of an open public space that would welcome debate between each of these Cuban groups. Taking on this challenge bears implicitly the radical redesign of state institutions and the Cuban Communist Party to be able to effectively accept in its midst all this diversity that we have been talking about. This should lead us to do without a “State ideology” that, in practice functions as a straight jacket that makes invisible and constraints all of the national diversity. The Martian republic “with all and for the good of all”, because of its ecumenism and universality, continuous to be the most suitable threshold to think Cuba in the beginning of the 21st century.

Lenier González Mederos. Havana, 1981. BA in Communications, Universidad de la Habana. Member of the Editorial Council (Assistant Editor) for Espacio Laical, publication of the Secular Council, Archdiocese of Havana. Member of the Secular Council
and Culture Commission for the Archdiocese of Havana. Currently teaches Communications at the San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminaries. Academic Coordinator for the MBA program at the Murcia Catholic University, Centro Cultural Padre Varela.

As usual, a wide range of excellent papers are presented at ASCE’s annual meetings Many essays include valuable, original and ground-breaking analyses on a wide range of economic as well as socio-economic and politico-economic issues..

A Table of Contents with hyperlinked titles of the papers is included below.